Swing states. Two Words Could Mean Joe Biden Is Finished.
Story by Peter Suciu.
Swing States could doom Joe Biden’s 2024 Run: According to a new poll from Bloomberg News/Morning Consult, President Joe Biden currently trails former President Donald Trump in Wisconsin and four additional key swing states. In the Badger State, 79 percent of registered voters said that the U.S. economy is on the wrong track – higher than the 74 percent average who said the same across seven other swing states.
Seventy-one percent of Pennsylvania voters, 73 percent of those in Michigan, 74 percent in Georgia, and 75 percent respectively in Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina shared a similar sentiment about the state of the U.S. economy.
“The dim outlook was held by Wisconsin voters in key demographic groups, including women, blue-collar workers, rural residents, and those ages 18 to 34,” Bloomberg News reported.
Wisconsin Voters Trust Trump More on the Economy
The poll further found that 48 percent of Wisconsin residents said they trust the former president more than the current one to handle the economy. Just 36 percent said they trust Biden more. There is a growing feeling in Wisconsin that the current “Bidenomics” policies are bad for the economy.
Wisconsin, once a solid part of the “Blue Wall,” crumbled in 2016 when Trump carried the state by 22,748 votes. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who didn’t visit the Badger State, was surprised by her loss. Biden then flipped the state back, and carried it by just 20,682 votes.
The recent poll found that even voters who are members of a union household believed Bidenomics was bad for the economy. That could be a worrisome portent for the president, as that block helped him win Wisconsin in 2020.
President Biden has clearly seen that Wisconsin is very much “in play” heading into the 2024 election, and earlier this week, the White House chose the state to be one of the 31 regional tech hubs, making it eligible for millions of dollars in federal funding to help advanced personalized medicine and biohealth technology. Wisconsin will progress to the next round of the competition, in which at least five tech hubs will win up to $75 million each under the CHIPS and Science Act passed last year.
The Swing States Matter More Than Ever
As noted by the Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll, it isn’t just Wisconsin that could determine who will win the presidency in just over a year. Currently, Trump leads Biden 47 percent to 43 percent in a head-to-head rematch in the other six swing states.
Of those states, all except for Nevada went for Trump in 2016, while all but North Carolina went for Biden in 2020. Once solidly red states such as Georgia, Arizona, and even North Carolina increasingly look purple – suggesting that Trump shouldn’t count on them any more than Clinton should have counted on Wisconsin.
As previously reported, North Carolina last went Democratic in 2008, when Barack Obama defeated John McCain by just 0.32 percent. Prior to that the state was last won by a Democrat in 1976 when Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford.
Trump won the state by 1.34 percent in 2020 and by 3.66 percent over Hillary Clinton.
By contrast, George W. Bush won the Tar Heel State by more than 12 points in both 2000 and 2004, and even as Bill Clinton infamously was able to win many traditionally Republican states in the south, he lost North Carolina in both 1992 and 1996.
Clearly, several swing states can be described as being in play.
Author Experience and Expertise
A Senior Editor for 19FortyFive, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism.
